It's Truly June

When I was in college, my friend Dan recounted an essay he'd written for freshmen English, well into spring, about how he'd put on longjohns that winter, then never stopped wearing them. A year later, he was still upset that his intructor's only comment on the paper was, "It might be time to take them off."

In the early days of my racing, and even a bit beyond that, I had a knack for colossal explosions on hot days. That was a problem. In the hope of fixing it, I tried to trick my body into acclimating for a warmer climate by wearing more layers as a default on the premise that when I shed one more layer than everyone else on race day, I'd have an advantage. Those layers included longjohns.

A good scientific experiment changes only one variable at a time, so it wasn't a fair test of my hypothesis. I also learned to ignore all my other competitors' pace at the start and only race against the heat. Whichever it was, it worked, and some of the biggest winning gaps I ever had were on brutally hot days, helped by everyone else eventually slowing much more than I did. Plus, maybe Dan was on to something: longjohns do have a certain cosy feel.

Yesterday was the third of June, and the forecast predicted a high of eighty degrees, and I did see that number at midday on a display in downtown Greenfield. A couple days ago, the high was in the sixties, so that's a big jump. Eighty has also become my threshold for removing my longjohns base layer, so I did for the first time this year and was completely comfortable with the spike. Of course, yes, I was still wearing pants and a long sleeve wool shirt, but hey, I want to be acclimated for July and August!

But hey again, did you notice, I rode to Greenfield, and back, which at a few ticks over fifty miles is the longest ride on my ornery right leg in at least a month, so yay, not better, but heading toward manageable, and part of that management included a thirty minute rest and stretch half way home. If I could learn to take care of the heat, maybe I can learn to take care of my body as well!